Government agencies and securities exchanges require that certain information on a security be made available to an investor before the security may be sold to the investor, and that certain information be delivered to the investor with the confirmation of any transaction. The delivery of this information has historically taken place either in person, or via document delivery services, such as the U.S. Mail, Federal Express, or United Parcel Service. Recently, government agencies and securities exchanges have begun allowing securities issuers and intermediaries to comply with information delivery requirements by approving the delivery of the information in an electronic format, for example, by transmitting the information from one computer to another over a computer network.
Securities information is available in various electronic databases, including the United States Securities and Exchange Commission's (“SEC's”) EDGAR database. EDGAR, the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system, performs automated collection, validation, indexing, acceptance, and forwarding of submissions by companies and others that are required by law to file information with the SEC. The primary purpose of EDGAR is to increase the efficiency and fairness of the securities market for the benefit of investors, corporations, and the economy by accelerating the receipt, acceptance, dissemination, and analysis of time-sensitive corporate information filed with the agency. EDGAR information is available on the Internet at www.sec.gov.
Although securities information is available from databases like EDGAR, the information is not provided in a useful electronic format that enables compliance with government and securities exchange regulations, especially with regard to mutual funds and other non-corporate securities. EDGAR, as a result of its design, makes information regarding non-corporate securities difficult to find. In EDGAR, mutual fund information, for example, is listed as a submission of the corporate issuer, not the fund name that is marketed to the consumer, and one submission may include information for more than one mutual fund. EDGAR submissions also may include updates and amendments to earlier submitted information. It is quite possible for a single mutual fund to have more than fifty amendments to its compliance information. An investor attempting to locate the complete set of compliance information for a mutual fund directly from EDGAR would need to retrieve all applicable amendments. This is time-consuming, and it is difficult for the investor, when attempting to gather compliance information from EDGAR, to know if all the amendments have actually been located, if the retrieved information about the fund is complete, or if the retrieved information is up-to-date.